LOS ANGELES -- Lupe Breard remembers coming to live in the Queen Anne Victorian house in Echo Park with her mother and siblings when she was a child. The memory is still vivid decades later, she says, because she didn't want to move there — until she saw the chimney and told herself Santa Claus could bring presents down it at Christmas. She'd never had a fireplace before.

She has stayed ever since, raising her three children in the historic home and watching as the neighborhood changed from a quiet, under-the-radar community to one where homes routinely sell for well over $1 million.

Breard stayed even after her mother died in 2018, leaving the house in her will to three of Breard's older siblings. She stayed after the family estate tried, unsuccessfully, to evict her. And she has continued fighting to stay after the house was sold in 2022 to an investor who wants her and her sister, Sarah Padilla, 73, out.

Over the years, Breard, 64, has come to see herself as the guardian of a historic house with an important history. "The Queen of Elysian Heights," as it is now known, is one of the earliest homes built in Echo Park. In the 1960s it was owned by members of the Arechiga family, who moved there after they drew national attention as the final holdouts resisting eviction from their home in Chavez Ravine to make way for Dodger Stadium.

"I know that once I'm gone it'll be impossible to defend it," Breard says. "I love that house. I love the walls. I love the staircase. I love walking out on the balcony at night when you can see the stars. I love the brick underneath the house where I used to hide when I was little."

The history of the Queen of Elysian Heights is not entirely clear, but it is believed to have been built in 1895, around the time when the community was first subdivided.

Many locals see the triplex as the cornerstone of a historic neighborhood whose connection to the Arechiga family serves as an important reminder of a dark moment in the city's past. Though it was once stadiums, freeways and city redevelopment that regularly displaced people in Black and Latino neighborhoods, today it is more likely to be gentrification and residential real estate investors.

"The house is very special," said Paul Bowers, a resident of the neighborhood who helped petition the city for historic status. "It's the first house in this entire area. And there's something magical about it."

Breard's mother was a waitress at a restaurant near Placita Olvera who stretched her tips to make ends meet. She rented the house for a few years, then bought it in 1975 for $18,500, according to public records. The neighborhood was quiet.

"You really had to tell people where Echo Park was," Breard says.

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